Misconduct is cognitively cheaper than originality

Financial misconduct doesn’t require a new model of markets. It requires access plus timing.

Intellectualizing something genuinely new—something that produces comparable results without privileged access—requires:

• abandoning inherited frameworks

• accepting reputational risk before validation

• operating without narrative cover

• being wrong publicly before being right

Most people don’t fail that test because they’re unethical.

They fail it because it’s psychologically and professionally harder than crossing a line quietly.

When someone uses insider timing, the hierarchy stays intact:

• same language

• same worldview

• same social order

When someone intellectualizes a new causal layer and wins cleanly, it threatens:

• who is considered “smart”

• what counts as expertise

• which careers were built on repetition

That’s why original work is treated as suspect even when it’s legal—and misconduct is treated as an “excess” rather than a systemic failure.

Aka human nature.